Get Wonkbook delivered to your inbox or mobile device every morning. It's everything you need to know about domestic and economic policy (and some stuff you don't).Subscribe now.

FCC rolls out iPhone app, Web site to test speeds, quality of broadband

Now you're talking. The Federal Communications Commission released tools Thursday that allow users to test the speeds and quality of service for their wireless and landline broadband connections. With that information, they (and the FCC) can know if broadband providers are offering the speeds they promise.

The agency's launched iPhone and Android applications and a feature on its Broadband.gov Web site that allows users to see what their upload and download connection speeds are. It also provides information on latency.

The data help give users a peek under the hood of the networks they subscribe to and allow them to see if their providers are giving the speeds and quality they promised. The applications are part of the FCC's national broadband plan, to be presented next Tuesday, to provide affordable and accessible broadband to all Americans.

There are numerous speed testing sites out there. But this is the first time a federal agency has offered its service to help it collect data. That data will likely be used to inform policies, such as consumer protections and disclosure rules for broadband users.

Ms. Kang, as usual, fail to mention the Google connection here. The development of one of the two tests, the "Measurement Labs" test, was sponsored by Google, and it rates the quality of the connection based on the ISP's connectivity to Google! This makes it anything but an unbiased test. But Ms. Kang does not mention this. Why? Could it be because her reporting is uniformly biased toward Google? Or because Google supplies ads that appear in her blog and it thus a major source of its advertising revenue? Why does Ms. Kang not disclose this conflict of interest in her articles or in her blog? Hmmm.

If Brett Glass could read, he would be able to understand that Broadband.gov has TWO DIFFERENT TEST TYPES, Ookla and M-Labs.

And if Brett didn't reside in the world of the Clockwork Orange, he would understand that M-LABS is a collaborative effort, particularly by several universities, Amazon Web Services, and BITTORRENT. By the way, M-LABS is an open-platform too, something I would suspect Brett would be in support of..

If Mr. "ryangee" had read what I wrote, he might understand that both tests have biases toward Google. An analysis of the Ookla program's traffic shows that it tests speeds by attempting to access Google-owned sites, thus basing its results on the speed with which a user's computer can access Google. "M-Labs" is an effort controlled and funded by Google, as can be seen at http://www.measurementlab.net/who (note that the New America Foundation is a DC "think tank" that is owned and operated by Google; its chairman is Google CEO Eric Schmidt). The universities also receive funds from Google. And BitTorrent, Inc. lobbies with Google for "network neutrality" regulation, which would cement Google's monopoly, raise the price of Internet service, choke innovation, and destroy jobs. And now you know... as they say... the rest of the story. Or some of the rest, at any rate.

Why are we constantly bowing down to the the latest, shiny, worthless technology?
Fat kids, fat adults with all kinds of medical conditions will welcome faster Internet because we've become a nation of lazy people. '2 seconds?' to long to wait. During the cold war we were called decadent by the Soviets over and over. They were and are absolutely right.

But do I want to give the 'gummint' my personal information just to run a test that Speednet.net, Speakeasy, PCPitstop and hundreds of other site have to test my speed, without any of them needing to know my physical address?? I think not!!

And with typical 'gummint' stupidity, only US ZIP codes are accepted, even though the drop down list has foreign areas on it.... Damn, don't you just love 'gummint' stupidity??

Packing: All the products are packed with original boxes and tags also retro cards/ code
numder

Features: AAA QUALITY, COMPETITIVE PRICE AND SERVICE
1) The goods are shipping by air express, such as EMS,the shipping time is in 5-7 business days
2) They are in stock now;
3) Various styles and color for clients' choice
4) The Products are fit for most people, because of our wholesale price

Brett Glass - Use the free Firefox and the free AdBlock Plus add-on and simply block all those ads. Speeds up your browsing experience too as you are not waiting for the doubleclick server to fill in the ads on each page load. And why shouldn't WP accept Google ads as a source of revenue so the online access remains free?

Using Google servers at least produces fairly reliable results on a statistical basis given their large footprint, use of Akamai to distribute server loading - in effect it normalizes testing so that you can compare comcast in dc to verizon in virginia.

The "foreign" sites are all US protectorates and have US zip codes. You must have slept through your HS geography course.

It does not test your honesty on the address so you can put any address you want in there. Of course putting in real data helps them. For example, I put in North Pole, Alaska while I was at work in DC and it worked just fine.

For what it's worth OOKLA and M-Labs gave essentially the same result and correctly reported our 10 meg connection here at work. I've been using the free OOKLA on my iPhone to test the redundant connections I have at home (Comcast and Verizon load balanced by a Nexland ISB Pro I bought off of ebay for $50) and other than the occasional slow downs at peak times in my residential area I pretty much get what was advertised.

Brett Glass, aka Clockwork Orange.. what does it really matter whether or not Google has anything to do with it? 98% of the American public won't use a site like broadband.gov. Hell, I'd love to see how many people have ever accessed FCC.org.

I agree that a government website should be impartial, however, using those two words in the same sentence is like committing an act of treason in the USA. Look around, whoever pays the most money (Google, of course, and the other incumbents such as ATT, Verizon, Comcrap, Time Warner) gets their influence. It just so happens that one of them is on the other side of the coin.

Get a grip on your life, it's not the END OF THE WORLD if a broadband.gov website uses some sort of Google tech.